¶76. All attacks which we suffer from the demons come from these three causes: from sensuality, or from pride, or from the envy of demons. The last are blessed, the middle are very pitiful, but the first are failures till the end.
¶103. There is a demon who comes to us when we are lying in bed and shoots at us evil and unclean thoughts, so that when we do not stand for prayer and thus are not armed against them, we may fall asleep with these foul thoughts and then have foul dreams too.
¶104. There is an evil spirit, called the forerunner, who assails us as soon as we awake from sleep and defiles our first thought. Devote the first-fruits of your day to the Lord, because the whole day will belong to whoever gets the first start. It is worth hearing what an expert told me: 'From my morning,' he said, 'I know the course of the whole day.'
¶185. We should not be dismayed if we find that we are more passionate at the outset of the monastic life than we were in our life in the world. For we have to remove the causes of sickness, and then health will come to us. The beasts were there in hiding all the time, only they did not show themselves.
¶126. The man who despairs of himself when he hears of the supernatural virtues of the saints is most unreasonable. On the contrary, they supremely teach you one of two things: either they rouse you to emulation by their holy courage, or they lead you by way of thrice-holy humility to deep self-contempt and realization of your inherent weakness.
¶13. Let those who have been humbled by their passions take courage. For even if they fall into every pit and are trapped in all the snares and suffer all the maladies, yet after their restoration to health they become physicians, beacons, lamps and pilots for all, teaching us the habits of every disease and from their own personal experience able to rescue those who are about to fall.
¶31. Angels are a light for monks, and the monastic life is a light for men. Therefore let monks strive to become a good example in everything, giving no occasion for stumbling in anything in all their works and words. For if the light becomes darkness, how much darker will be that darkness, that is, those living in the world.
